The Ivy Walls

Chapter 8

"Three! Two! One! Charge!" 

The group raced towards the monster, Teddi and Gwen shouting to cast the monster's attention away from Dale and Jesse. It turned around and started growing knives out of its hand-is things and started slashing at the girls, not even seeing the other two scuttling around it. Dale snuck around behind it and started climbing up the monsters knives on its back, he had bandages wrapped around his palms so they wouldn't get cut with Jesse following behind him. Dale grabbed the knife tucked up his left sleeve and with as much force as he could, he thrust the weapon right next to where the largest knife sticking out the demon's back was. 

Jesse did the same but with the second largest protrusion. The creature screeched as loud as it could and started stumbling around. Attempting to fling the two off it in a dying pursuit, it spun around as fast as a cat in water, succeeding in getting Jesse to fall off and hit the wall, sinking to his knees. Dale held on as tight as he could, thinking he would be in less pain if he held on tight, but was soon proved incorrect. The monster fell on its back, with Dale still holding on.

The girls screamed as everything seemed to go in slow motion for Dale. Jesse watched on with a look of horror plastered across his face. The creature finally hit the ground and Dale lost consciousness. The girls screamed even louder and sprinted towards Dale with Jesse running as fast as he could considering his mild concussion from hitting the wall. Gwen started crying and trying to lift the monster off Dale in a hopeless attempt to get it off. Teddi and Jesse helped and they eventually managed to lift it off. Teddi gasped and Jesse dropped down next to Dale in disbelief. He had been impaled through his right arm and his lower abdomen and was covered is large cuts with a massive gash across his forehead.

Jesse barked orders at the girls to get all of the medical supplies they had as he gently pick Dale up and started walking over towards where the backpacks were. Jesse slipped off the hoodie he was wearing so he could lay Dale on it. The last thing he was expecting was to hear the sound of supplies arriving as a fairly large boulder fell to the ground from the wall across from them. He rushed over and grabbed everything inside, hoping with every fibre of his being that it was medical supplies and as if god had answered his prayers, it was. A new rock replaced the gap in the wall as Jesse darted back to the girls. 

He started bandaging Dale's abdomen, begging he didn't have any internal bleeding. He wrapped Dale's whole forearm over his hoodie sleeve since the sleeve helped as another layer keeping the blood in. He and the girls started cleaning all of the large wounds with povidone-iodine and putting as many bandaids and gauze pads as they could on him before he could bleed out any more.

After they were done, they all sat down in relief. Jesse walked away from the group and sat next to Dale's limp body. Teddi and Gwen were glad they had saved Dale and started chatting like nothing happened, trying to distract themselves from how shaken they felt. Jesse was far from the girls and even though he was out of earshot of them, he started whispering to Dale's unconscious body. 

"I'm so so sorry Dale. I thought that the plan would be the least risky and would end with as minimal injuries as possible, but...-" He looked over all of Dale's bandages, his voice was shaking as his eyes blurred with tears. He looked away from the limp boy as tears began falling down his cheeks and onto Dale's face. "I-I couldn't get to you in time, I didn't predict the m-monster would react like that. If I had thought about it m-more I could ha-have come up with a b-be-better plan b-but I was too quick t-to judge it. I-I'm so so so sorry. But please. Please please please just wake up for me." 

Jesse was sobbing now, begging for Dale to wake up, to see his beautiful and unique grey eyes looking back at him. He was covering his mouth to silence his cries, unable to see a thing past all of his tears when he felt a hand pull his arm away from his face. He cleared his eyes quickly to see Dale looking up at him with pitying eyes. Jesse's breath hitched in his throat. "D-Dale?" He asked, in doubt that his mind was stable, if this was just a hallucination, that he had been in such denial that he fully imagined Dale waking up, but Dale nodded and he knew this wasn't a dream or hallucination. It was real.

Jesse pulled Dale into the tightest hug he could give and only loosened his grip when he heard Dale's whimpers of pain. He realised he was squeezing down on Dale's wounds and quickly let go. "Fuck! Sorry! Just... never do that to me again got it!?" Jesse almost yelled with a smile and more tears falling down his face, tears of relief and happiness this time. Dale laughed and wiped away Jesse's tears, "Promise." He said, smiling at the teary-eyed boy in front of him. The girls rushed over to Dale and Jesse and almost tackled Dale back to the ground. "DALE!" They both yelled in his ears, almost deafening him. "We're so glad you're alright!" Teddi and Gwen shouted in unison, tears threatening to leave their eyes. 

Dale laughed at their reactions and sat up as the sat down next to Jesse, who was no longer tearing up and had no evidence on him that he was crying before."How are you feeling? You got pretty torn up back there." Teddi asked, concerned, hoping he didn't have any internal injuries. The others nodded and looked at Dale. "I feel fine, just aching in my arm and stomach, my head hurts a little, everything else is kinda tingly but that's it." He stated, "I don't know what you guys gave me but worked like magic." He began stretching his arms, legs, back and neck as if testing how they worked. 

The other three seemed confused as they only applied antiseptic and bandages to his seemingly  fatal wounds, but just brushed it off as luck that he wasn't impaled in any internal areas too important. "Can you stand?" Gwen asked, holding out her hand to help him up. "I don't know but I guess there's only one way to find out." Dale said in a chirpy tone, lightening the mood considerably. The group laughed and helped him up. 

He swayed on his legs before his knees gave out. Jesse caught him quickly and put his arm around his shoulder to help steady him. "I guess not very well." Dale laughed, not daunted by his failure of such a simple task. "I can help you walk like this until you can stand on your own and one of us can carry your backpack while we walk. We don't know if the monster is dead or just unconscious but we can't risk it since none of us are in good enough shape to fight again, especially not you." Jesse stated, moving his arm to better support Dale's body as Teddi picked up his bag and they started walking away from the monster but not back the way they came.

Oof, this was a good chapter. Jesse is finally starting to accept he loves Dale (not sure if that spoiled anything but it was kind of obvious anyway). I have a big plan for next chapter (: It's gonna be great is all I'm saying. Anyways,

Word Count: 1314